nickperzik

first professional photo center in santa monica is really nice. it's a little like being back in school - there are enlargers around the wall, and a big wet table in the middle, but it's not too expensive and the people who work there are really nice. and there are always people printing who are more than happy to share secrets and advice. this is their website: www.darkroomrental.com

the man truly is a genius. i don't think i've seen a picture of his that hasn't moved me in some way. if you can find it, he has a book that he did with his late wife, dorthea lynch, "exploding into life," i believe it's called, about her struggle with and eventual death of breast cancer. he took the photos and she wrote the text. really heartbreaking. i must have been quite a sight, blubbering in the book store. the photographs are so loving and tender, but also raw and honest. a lot of his stuff is on the magnum site. check out the pictures he did for adidas - they're hilarious.

timex makes a nifty one that fits convenietnly around your wrist....

tri x pushes pretty easily. ideally it's best to use a push developer like tmax or microphen, but people were pushing it long before those developers existed. have a look at www.digitaltruth.com - they have starting point times for every film/dev/ei combo you can imagine.

Union Station, Los Angeles, Ca

Chaos and, if you can find it, Exiles both by josef koudelka. Sidewalk by jeff mermelstein. anything by bruce gilden - i think he has current books on coney island and japan. Fuji by chris steele-perkins. The Menonites by larry towell. and of course all the great books already mentioned.

the basic idea is this: on a bright sunny day, with a front lit subject, you can set your exposure to f/16 and 1/iso(the number closest to your film speed) and get a well exposed neg or slide. this actually does work. i live in los angeles where it's sunny a lot of the time, so i can leave my camera set to f/16 at 1/250 for tri x for most of the day, or until i go into the shade, or indoors, etc. it's pretty handy to know this stuff even if you use your meter all the time. if you're outside on a sunny day and you meter is giving you something really far from sunny 16, then you know you have meter problems. i actually started using it just to see if it would work. i'm fascinated with the history of our medium and more i read about capa, cartier-bresson, robert frank, eugene smith, mary ellen mark, and all the other people who shot - color and black and white - with meterless cameras, the more i felt it was important to be able to do it. you never know when your battery might go. and i've found it's much quicker to set exposures by expereince and then check yourself with your meter, than to just point your camera and set it to what the meter tells you. try it and see for yourself. just remember to set your shutter speed not to the iso rating, but to your own ei for the film you're using. i've found the former (1/500th for tri x!) to be a little thin for my taste. good shooting!

my favorite zoom is a well worn pair of black chuck taylors. in the time it takes to fiddle around with a zoom lens, i can just as easily take two steps forward or back. if i anticipate really needing a zoom - like at a tightly packed concert or demonstration - i bring an slr with a zoom lens on it. the cost of the extra camera is nowhere near what i would be wasting on all that unnecessary cropping. besides, getting it right in the camera is half the fun. when you see your framed 16x20 being carried away by the person who just gave you the wad of cash in your hand, you'll be really glad you didn't crop it to death.

strap-rub marks and "leitz" red dot on early m6.

i shoot handheld on the street most of the time, so when i push

film it's so that i can use a faster shutter speed. for example, a

one stop push can mean the difference between shooting a

moving subject at 1/30 and having it blur slightly, or shooting at

1/60 and getting everything sharp. that said, if i feel the need to

push my film, it's usually more than one stop - i very often push

tri-x to 1600 at night with great success.

i bought a VERY early m6 - one of the first from wetzlar, beat up just enough that it's not a collectors' camera - and it had some problems, but the meter has always worked perfectly. actually the only problems it had were from not being used for a long time. i got a cla from steve choi here in L.A. and it's like butter. no problems since. maybe i was just lucky.....

i suddenly find myself being stared at by a lot of middle aged men. my girlfriend thinks it's hilarious and always has to point it out to me when we go out. it is pretty funny. luckily most of the people i want to photograph aren't really camera savvy and they just think i'm a weird guy with a funny, old fashioned camera.

i have a 3rd version, which i believe is optically identical to the 2nd version, and i love it. it's everything you would expect a leitz lens to be. sharp, contrasty, beautiful color, fast and compact enough to be inconspicuous even with the lens shade on. there is a little bit of vignetting wide open - which is normal for a wide angle lens from the 70's - and usually when i'm shooting wide open the corners are dark anyway. as for the bokeh.... i'm still not sure what exactly that is, but i think it makes more sense to choose a lens for how it renders things that are IN focus. oh yeah, i almost forgot - the 3rd version, which i understand is optically better than the 4th sells for about $300 less.

i've only got one m body and a 35mm lens right now(don't you all feel sorry for me?) and when i was shooting antiwar demonstrations this year, i was carrying my m6 around my neck and an fm2 with a 28mm on my shoulder. i found that when i was packed into a crowd there was a huge difference between 35 and 28. walking down the street or shooting a portrait not so much. i love the 35 and i probably shoot 90% of my pictures with it, but in a crowd like that i was really glad i had my 28 with me.

portra 160nc rated @ 100. beeyooteefull! although i like the 400 better. i shoot that @ 200. really nice color. not grainy at all for a 400. like the 200's of a few years ago. really purty.

winogrand had that amazing instinct for knowing when something was going to happen and being ready when it did, so i think he probably had a good percentage of great shots - even if we don't get so see a lot of them. i shoot a lot of film and even though i shoot very quickly sometimes, i'm still very careful about framing and about when i open the shutter. i try to be more considerate about each shot because i shoot alot, so by the time i get to the editing table, i'm happy with about half of what i shoot. and then i print maybe half of the shots that i liked on the proofsheet. when i go back and re-edit months or years later, i end up prining a lot more.

anyway, to answer the question already, i shoot tri-x because i love it, and fortunately for me it's not too expensive. i pay about 3.50 a roll for 36 exposures. and i think i spend about $40-$50 a week on my personal stuff - i don't really keep track anymore. but if you really want to save money on film, try bulk loading.

i seem to be in the minority here, but i love 3200 tmax. a lot of people seem to have problems with it, but i never have. i started shooting it way back when, and i did just like kodak said w/tmax developer and i've never been disappointed. that said, i'm more likely to push tri-x a stop or two when i'm out and about. i mostly use the tmax for music jobs when i have to shoot in really dark clubs. but it always lives up to my expectations.<div></div>

i just looked through it at arkana bookstore in santa monica. it's really beautiful. kristian, you should try supporting real bookstores - they need all the help they can get. and they also have the book in stock now.....

why do we always liken our cameras to things like bmw's or mercedes' or other cars? i think a much more meaningful analogy would be that of a musician using a fine instrument. the way i use my cameras is much more similar to how i use my bass than to how i use my car(which is cheap old vw fox btw - i spend my money on things that are important..... not cars!) why do i use a leica? it's small, it's unobtrusive, it's quiet, the viewfinder lets me concentrate on the subject more than an slr, it doesn't get in my way. and the one lens i have for it, an older 35 summicron, is amazing. but when i need something wider or longer i break out my fm2n and my 28mm nikkor(which, frankly, is the sharpest lens i've ever owned) or my 50 or 85. i don't know, i just love my leica. the same way i loved my first music man bass. i loved my fenders but there was just something special about the music man - hand made, beautiful attention to detail, and one hell of a sturdy workhorse bass. just like the leica.

oh yeah, and i would use hypo clear after any fixer even if manufacturer says i don't need to. why risk your negs? hypo clear is so cheap and quick to mix it's almost a no brainer for me. have fun!

i've used regualr kodak fixer with every film i've ever shot and it works great. mixing it is a bore though. stirring 35 pounds of powder into 3 quarts of water takes forever, but that's nothing a good pair of headphones can't fix. the only thing i don't like about it is with certain films - t-max - the times can be a bit excessive - 8-10 minutes with fresh fixer. i recently had a job where i was shooting dozens of rolls of t-max 3200 and decided to try ilford rapid fixer. who knew you could fix t-max in 3 minutes?! i'm still using regular fix w/tri x. but it's nice to know i don't have to stand there for 10 minutes if i don't want to. oh, and as to the hardener, the only real difference i notice is that w/o it my negs don't curl as much when they dry. why not buy a quart of regular fix and see for yourself?

a less complicated way to say it would be: if you take an f/stop, any f/stop - let's use f/2 since we've already started with it - the "f" stands for the focal length of the lens. so f/2 on a 90mm lens would be 90mm/2. on a 35mm lens it would be 35mm/2 and so on. so the f/stop is always relative to the focal length in use. if you look at apertures of 2 lenses of different focal lengths you'll see that f/8 on the longer lens is larger than f/8 on the shorter lens. ok, it's almost 3am here if i think anymore i'll die.......

oh yeah........ and yes leica IS the answer.

get a part time job at a camera store. that's what i did and i got my m6 and 35 summicron for about $1500. you may be able to find a botter deal than that if the store has them on hand and can't move them. my boss had to get them for me but he charged me only what he paid for them. now i'm about 2 weeks away from putting in my 2 weeks notice. retail feels so dirty.......

too much color/contrast for me. i cast the sole vote in the color negative box. i really love the kodak portra nc films rated about a stop slower. beautiful subtle colors, good shadow AND highlight detail - especially w/leica lenses. btw eggleston shot kodak vericolor neg film and got the pumped up color with dye transfer printing. the woman at the rose gallery in santa monica, ca. told me. i suppose maybe he shoots portra nowadays?